With the release of SQL Server 2012 CU4, backing up databases directly to Azure Blog Storage is presented as an option for managing backups. This provides a great opportunity to leverage the cloud for off-site, geo-redundant data storage for disaster recovery that is available from any location. This article is an overview of how to get started using the cloud as a part of your DR plan.

Setting up your storage

Step 1: Create account

Creating an Azure account is quick and easy, and there is currently a 1 month trial available at http://www.windowsazure.com. Once you request your account, it may take 24 hours for it to be provisioned. Keep this in mind as you will not be able to begin testing immediately.

Step 2: Add storage

Now that you have your account, you will need to add your storage. This is quick and easy, with the only steps being to name your storage, pick a location, and choose whether your storage should be geo-redundant or locally redundant.

Step 3: Create container

In order to save any files into your storage, you will need to add a container. To do this, click on the name of your newly created storage. From here, you can monitor and change the configuration of your storage. Click on the navigation for “Containers”. In the “New Container” dialog, pick a name for what files will be in the container. For our purposes here, we can just call this “sqlbackups”. You also have the choice of access types – generally speaking you will leave this at the default of “Private”.

Now that you have a container created, you will see that the container has a URL. This is the URL that you will use to point your backups to this container. The format of this URL is [storage name].core.windows.net/[container]. While the URL shows http://, https:// will also work.

Step 4: Manage access keys – created by default

When you are in your storage account on the dashboard, you will notice “Manage Access Keys” at the bottom of the screen. Clicking this will take you to a screen with 2 access keys pre-generated for your storage account. You will use these to create a credential in the next step.

Creating your backup

Step 1: Create credential

In order to perform a backup to the cloud storage, you will need to create a credential on the SQL Server instance that you wish to take backups from. The identity of the credential is the storage name from Azure, and the secret is the access key from step 5 above.

With your storage account and credential created, all that is left is to issue a backup command. The biggest difference here is that instead of backing up TO DISK, you are backing up TO URL. The URL specified in the command is the URL that is associated with the container that you created, with the name of the database backup file appended to it. Authentication is handled by the credential. Since you are transmitting this file to the cloud, it is recommended that you perform your backup with compression.

After a refresh of your container in Azure, your backup file will be there. Success!

You may choose to perform a backup using the SSMS GUI. While backup TO URL exists in SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU4 and beyond, the ability to perform a backup in this manner through the GUI does not exist prior to SQL Server 2014. After choosing URL instead of DISK as the “Back up to:” destination, you are prompted for the file name, credential, and container. This will automatically generate the url for backing up the database.

Restoring a backup from Azure Blob Storage

Restoring a backup from Azure Blob Storage to your SQL Server instance (on-prem or Azure) is just as easy as taking the backup. Your options are to download the file, or restore from URL. To download the file, simply navigate in the Azure web portal to the container with your backups, and click “Download”. You can then restore the file using commands exactly as you would with any other on-prem file. If you choose to restore from URL, the modifications are the same as the changes when backing up – create the same credential as you did for taking the backup, and in your backup statement indicate a URL, and the credential.

As with restoring a backup from disk, you can use MOVE to put the files in a different location.

Adopting a cloud backup strategy: Compatibility

If you choose to use Azure Blob Storage for your backup strategy, you may have an environment with instances that are not on SQL Server 2012 CU4 or beyond. This matter is resolved using the SQL Server Backup to Azure Tool. Simply install this tool, point it to a folder, and it manages the transmission of files in that folder to Azure Blob Storage. This tool also allows you to compress and encrypt backups for transmission, where the version of SQL Server that you are running may not.